5. Hello, London!

"When I was shooting Werewolf, Warren Beatty was shooting Reds here and there was also another little film in progress called Raiders Of The Lost Ark," says Landis

"These were all made under a very useful tax-break agreement called the Eady Levy, which began the boom of Americans coming to make big pictures with largely British casts and crews in London in the 1960s. Turns out mine was one of the last Eady pictures made."

Despite the low budget, he managed to win some early support to pull off impressive sequences in the middle of the city.

"Everyone remembers the Piccadilly Circus scene. London was quaintly chaotic as far as filming went - it was basically a case of persuading the local bobby on the beat, and if they said you could do it, you were sort of OK.

"So I put on a free screening of The Blues Brothers in the Empire Leicester Square and invited 300 members of the Metropolitan police. They loved it - and, whaddaya know, suddenly I had permission to shoot in Piccadilly Circus.

"I got two February nights, between 1am and 4am and was allowed to stop traffic three times, for two minutes maximum. So we rebuilt the Circus off-site and rehearsed the big crash scene many times and my crew were drilled like a Formula One team, so when it came to the big bus crash we could clear it up and do another take in seconds.

"Vic Armstrong, who was the bus driver, went on to design many of the James Bond stunts. Boy, we worked fast."

But there was one big hiccup that Landis had to overcome - a racial issue.
"I had terrible trouble with the unions, too. At that time, you couldn't find what they then called a "coloured" face to be an extra.

"I remember after George Lucas shot Star Wars in London, he showed it to all of us and I said to him after the screening: 'George, is everybody in outer space white?' I knew London to be a multicultural place - we filmed in the year of the Brixton riots, remember - but I just couldn't get Indian or black faces to be in the crowd. Eventually, after a big stand-off, the unions gave in and we got 'coloured' faces into the background."

Among the other faces he slipped into the background were a wealth of British character actors and a comedian or two.

"Frank Oz and Jim Henson were in London making The Muppet Show and they took me to the Comedy Store on a night off and there was this act on, two guys called Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson," Landis wrote in The Observer. "They were basically just screaming at each other, but it was hilarious. I went to meet them afterwards and, I don't know why, I just offered them a part in the movie.

"I don't think they really believed me, because Ade didn't turn up but Rik did - he was right, I didn't actually have a part for him but I loved his face so we sat him down in the Slaughtered Lamb pub for the opening scene and his presence really helps to establish the mood of the movie."

Aside from London, Landis and co shot around the country, including the moors near Hay Bluff on the Welsh border, and the town of East Proctor, while The Slaughtered Lamb Pub is actually two places  - a house in Crickadarn dressed to look like an inn and The Black Swan in Surrey, which provided the interiors.

With the footage in the can - including those aforementioned, post-production mini-shoots to produce the wolf moments - Landis could return to the States to edit and get his film into shape to be seen…

Next: Out In The Wild